Texas will be a major battleground in the 2020 presidential contest and President Trump will face a "serious race" for its 38 electoral votes, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Newsmax Thursday morning.

Although he declined to predict what percentage of the vote the president would get in the Lone Star State, Cruz did tell us "it would be closer than last time" when Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton, 52.3% to 43.3%.

Cruz, himself a 2016 Republican presidential hopeful, offered his analysis to us at a press breakfast in Washington, D.C., hosted by The Christian Science Monitor.

The Texas senator cited his own close reelection battle in 2018 as a "powerful foreshadowing of what to expect in the rest of the country" and particularly in Texas in 2020.

Cruz said his 2018 Democratic opponent "Beto O'Rourke raised over $80 million against us and outspent us 3-to-1." He emphasized that this was "the most expensive Senate race in history."

He added that where he had 18 full-time campaign staffers in his reelection effort, "O'Rourke had 805 — and that produced real results. Democrats improved their turnout more than 100% — 1.8 million [for the previous Democratic Senate nominee] to 4.5 million" for O'Rourke.

Turning to 2020, Cruz predicted "we will see record-shattering Democratuc turnout. The far-left is [angry] and they hate the president and are motivated."

The senator stressed that Republicans "have got to turn everybody out" in Texas and recalled how he managed to edge O'Rourke in 2018 by a strong get-out-the-vote effort among reliable supporters in the closing weeks of the campaign.

"Texas has been the white whale for Democrats for a long time," he told us, "and if we lose Texas [in 2020] it's game over."

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports,Go Here Now.